Friday, July 1, 2011

Randall Dale Adams, a former death row inmate who gained freedom after flaws in his conviction for the murder of a Dallas policeman were exposed in a critically acclaimed documentary, has died. He was 61.

Adams died Oct. 30, 2010, of a brain tumor, according to his attorney Randy Schaffer, who said he was told by Adams' relatives. Adams had been living quietly in the Ohio city of Washington Court House. His death did not become widely known until Friday, when it was reported by The Dallas Morning News.

Adams, who had spent more than 12 years in a Texas prison, was the subject of "The Thin Blue Line," directed by noted documentarian Errol Morris. The 1988 film uncovered suppressed evidence and perjured testimony.

The Texas appeals court ordered a new trial, but the Dallas district attorney's office declined to file new charges, and Adams was freed in 1989.

"He was one of the first people in the country to be exonerated in a case that had that kind of profile," Schaffer said in an interview Sunday.

Adams' ordeal began in November 1976 when he moved to Dallas to find work.

On Nov. 27, his car ran out of gas, and he hitched a ride with 16-year-old David Harris, who had an extensive criminal record and was driving a stolen car.

The two spent the day together, drinking beer and smoking marijuana and ended up at a drive-in theater, where they eventually parted.

Early the next morning, Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood was shot and killed after stopping a car for a traffic violation. The investigation led to Harris, who named Adams as the killer. Adams, who had no prior criminal record, was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to death.

Within three days of execution in May 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his death sentence over an error in jury selection. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Morris learned of Adams' case when he went to Dallas to work on a documentary about a psychiatrist whose testimony helped to convict Adams and others.

Morris tracked down three witnesses whose testimonies had helped to convict Adams and persuaded them to appear on camera. Each gave accounts that dramatically differed from their testimonies.

The movie prompted a judge to grant a new hearing at which Harris recanted much of his earlier testimony, although he did not confess to killing the officer. Harris was later executed for another murder.

Adams spoke frequently to the media and proclaimed that he was not bitter about his experiences. That seemed to change after he was fired from a job in Texas when his employer learned of his wrongful conviction. He had never received any restitution for his many years behind bars, said Schaffer, and he later sued Morris to regain the right to tell his own story.

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Polunsky Unit - Welcome to Hell

Texas Death Row is a disgrace to the state of Texas. Click on the photo above to view 50 recent annotated pictures of the "living' conditions" on Texas Death Row. These photos were provided by the State of Texas in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by attorney Yolanda Torres. These photos were eventually posted on Thomas Whitaker's blog, "Minutes Before Six". Mr. Whitaker is currently on Death Row in the state of Texas.

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The little we can do, the very little we can do, we must do; for honor's sake, yet without illusions.Théodore Monod

Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.The Talmud

Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do that.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.Oscar Wilde

I am constantly amazed by man's inhumanity to man.Primo Levi

Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.Woody Allen

I am not, sir, a bad person, though in all truth I am not lacking in reasons for being one. We are all born naked, and yet, as we begin to grow up, it pleases Destiny to vary us, as if we were made of wax. Then, we are all sent down various paths to the same end: death. Some men are ordered down a path lined with flowers, others are asked to advance along a road sown with thistles and prickly pears. The first gaze about serenely and in the aroma of their joyfulness they smile the smile of the innocent, while the latter writhe under the violent sun of the plain and knit their brows like varmints at bay. There is a world of difference between adorning one's flesh with rouge and eau-de-cologne and doing it with tattoos that later will never wear off.Camilo José Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.Dante, Inferno

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.Mahatma Gandhi

It would take me a long time to understand how systems inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and to learn that being kind in an unjust system is not enough.Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking

The worst in the worst is expecting the worst.Daniel Pennac

The justification for mercy has its roots not in merit, but in need. We don’t deserve mercy, we need it. I think all of us—the best and the worst—are in need of mercy, and it is only by showing mercy that, morally, we ourselves become entitled to receiving it. Bereft of mercy, our society would be impoverished and inhuman, for mercy is quintessentially a human quality, not found elsewhere in the natural world.

You can take away our names and replace them with numbers, cage and store us in conditions not even fit for your family dog, and exterminate us at your whim, but we are still human beings, capable of everything from love and beauty to violence and hate.Thomas B. Whitaker (Texas Death Row inmate #999522)

This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, on why Kentucky's lethal injection protocol did not qualify as cruel and unusual and therefore was not unconstitutional.

Almost all my [Death Penalty] clients should have been taken out of their homes when they were children. They weren't. Nobody had any interest in them until, as a result of nobody's interest in them, they became menaces, at which point society did become interested, if only to kill them.David R. Dow, Texas Public Defender Service attorney